Visions of America: Amériques is a site-specific architectural video installation, which was developed to illuminate and enhance Edgard Varèse’s’ composition and to complement the architecture of Walt Disney Concert Hall. The dynamic visual program uses custom-built algorithmic sound analysis to listen and respond in real-time to the music and movements of conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. It utilized the architecture as a canvas, light as a material, and sound as the inspiration.

This collaboration was approached as a non-linear and ephemeral interaction between Salonen, Varèse, and Refik Anadol Studio. Transforming Varese’s timeless musical fiction into an immersive visual medium, Visions of America: Ameriques embodied the possibility for a new kind of storytelling. Rather than approaching this medium as a means of escape into some disembodied techno-utopian fantasy, this project sees itself as a means of return – releasing habitual perceptions and biased assumptions to perceive our own stories and the stories around us in a new dimension.